1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cell culture apparatus and the fabricating method of the same, especially to a cell culture apparatus and its fabricating method for cell culturing.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventional cell culture apparatus for in vitro cell culture or bioreactors in laboratories has certain limits in culturing cells for medical use. The shortcoming of the conventional cell culture apparatus for in vitro cell culture cannot show the real activity of a cell in vivo because of the conventional cell culture apparatus lacks mass transfer system. On the other hand, the conventional bioreactor is suitable for protein drugs only. Besides, the bioreactor occupies large space and needs complicated operating process. Furthermore, the shear strength of fluid, and the micro-environment lack of physical similarity in the system of the bioreactor makes tissue specific cells with biological functions not be cultured. For example, if the isolated liver cells are cultured without other kinds of cells in the bioreactor, the liver cells will lose their mature physical function in one week, and the liver cells will be dead eventually.
Recently, several systems for culturing cells in vitro but with real activity in vivo, such as Extracellular Matrix (ECM), Media modification and co-culture system, are proposed. The bio-compatible polymer of a conventional cell culture frame (cell culture platform) used in the methods mentioned above are produced by sol-gel method. The pore size of the frame made of the sol-gel method is in the range of 50-100 μm. However, the size of a normal cell is in the range of 5-20 μm. Owing to the pore is bigger than the size of the cells, cell clusters will be formed in the pore of the frame. Moreover, the pore size of a cell culture frame produced by conventional methods can not be narrow down to 100 μm or less. And the precise size of the structure is not easy to be re-produced. Hence the systems for culturing cells in vitro illustrated above cannot be used for mass production.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an improved method to mitigate the aforementioned problems.